by April White
“And you?”
There it was. The loaded question dangling in thin air. Do I pay lip service or be honest? Honest then. “I miss you.”
He stood stock-still and I swore I could hear the frost forming on the rock walls. “I suppose it’s too much to ask which me you miss?”
That hurt, but I deserved it. I guess a century of life brings a fair degree of understanding with it. And in all honesty, I couldn’t answer that question. So I didn’t. And he didn’t press the issue. “I brought you a Christmas present.” I held out the wrapped box and it hung there in the air for a long moment before he finally took it from my hand.
His voice was a whisper. “Thank you.” I’d shaken him. He opened the wrapping slowly. “It’s been a very long time since anyone’s given me a gift.”
I could feel the key turning in the locked door to my heart, and waves of pain were pulsing out. Tears welled up in my eyes, for the man he’d been, alone for so very long. But he couldn’t see them. He was intent on opening the box.
Inside was a wristwatch. A simple gold face with Roman numerals and a leather band. His expression betrayed his surprise and delight. “Beautiful,” he said as he looked into my eyes. And I wasn’t sure he meant the watch.
“I always hated your pocket watch.”
Archer laughed. “I got rid of that long ago. At a certain point in time only old men wore those things.”
“Exactly.”
He took the watch out of the box and held it to his wrist. “I love this.”
“There’s something engraved on the back.”
He turned it over, and by the light of the moon read the words the jeweler had inscribed there for me. “Yours For All Time.”
He stared at the back of the watch for a long time, and his fingers shook a little when he finally strapped the band to his wrist. When he looked at me there were tears in his eyes. “As I am yours forever.”
I touched his face softly, wiping away the tear that had fallen. He smiled and rubbed the backs of his hands across his cheeks. Such a guy thing to do.
I kissed him then, before he could say anything. And I spoke the words that had been locked up inside me.
“I love you.”
And then the door to my heart came open with an audible snap, or maybe that was just my ears popping from floating so high off the ground.
Fated for one, born to another
The child must seek to claim the Mother
The Stream will split and branches will fight
Death will divide, and lovers unite
The child of opposites will be the one
To heal the Dream that War’s undone…
THE END
A word about Jack the Ripper …
Time travel is my very favorite vehicle for absorbing historical facts. Take a character who thinks they have everything figured out, then drop them into a time where nothing makes sense and go on the journey with them as they learn it all. Add a historical mystery to it and I’m hooked.
It doesn’t get more mysterious than the identity of Jack the Ripper, and it’s at the heart of the history in Marking Time. His “canonical five” victims were all prostitutes working in and around Whitechapel, London, and the night of Jack the Ripper’s double murders – at Dutfield Yard and Mitre Square – has true details from police and eye-witness accounts. The location of the Ripper’s victims, the descriptions of various persons of interest, and life in Victorian London were derived from hours and hours of down-the-rabbit-hole internet research. I’ve been told, though I have never substantiated it for myself, that Scotland Yard’s private museum contains actual artifacts from the Ripper case. In fact, all the history in Marking Time is historically accurate … until, of course, it isn’t.
The Cotton Wharf fire of 1861 actually happened, and was remarkable for the death of the fire chief. The rumrunner tunnels in Venice Beach, and the Tower Bridge tunnels exist. St. Brigid’s school is loosely based on Ingatestone Hall in Essex, and Bethlem Hospital is drawn in words as precisely as I could make it from blueprints and old photographs.
Now, if only I could actually free-run like Saira and Ringo can do …
An excerpt from Tempting Fate – Book Two of the Immortal Descendants Series:
I almost laughed when I recognized the pungent scent of the river in Victorian times. The lapping of the water against the pillars of the London Bridge felt like home and the only people I saw on the street were the ones stumbling out of pubs. As long as I kept my head down and walked fast, I thought I could disappear into the background of the wharf.
But then again, I used to think there was no such thing as time travel, and look where that got me.
I was just about to turn into the alley where Ringo’s loft was when someone bumped into me, hard. I’d been so focused on the sound of footsteps behind me that I forgot to look up, and whoever it was came at me from above.
“Oy! Watch where yer goin’!”
“Sorry,” I mumbled, trying not to let the guy know I was female. Instantly, three more toughs materialized out of the shadows and the certainty that life in the next five minutes was going to get very interesting walloped me upside the head.
The ringleader seemed vaguely familiar. His cap was slung low over his eyes and he had the wide stance of a guy who didn’t often have to run for his survival. When he spoke again I knew. He was one of the thieves I’d first encountered with Ringo. The guys he’d been proud of having ditched when he went to work for Gosford at the river.
“You’ll not be needin’ yer hock-dockeys then.”
This was not going to go well for me, that much was clear by the shoulder-to-shoulder stance of the ones closest to me. Not that I had a clue what hock-dockeys were, but I didn’t think they were planning to leave me conscious while they took them.
Two options instantly flashed through my brain. Well, three, but succumbing to their fists wasn’t so much an option as a price for failure. I could stand up to them and reveal I was female, in hopes that at least one of them was raised not to hit a girl, or I could run and take my chances. I didn’t know if Victorian sensibilities included rape, but I thought it would be a stretch to imagine any of them was gentleman enough to back off just because of a difference in plumbing.
Right. Run then.
The toughs, including a Nervous Nelly who couldn’t stand still on his pegs, pretty much had forward and backward covered. So my options were limited to up and down. My eyes flicked above me and I flinched. Someone was there, calmly crouched on a window ledge as if waiting for an escape-to-the-roof attempt.
Which left down.
“Yer not movin’ fast enough, nib-cove. I’ll be havin’ yer upper-ben too fer me trouble.”
Yeah, right. What he said. Marble-mouth would have made me laugh if I wasn’t so sure I’d die before the sound made it past my lips. With another quick glance up to see the Roof-Tough hadn’t moved, I dropped to the street, and in one fluid motion of my leg, swept the feet out from under Nervous Nelly. He went down like a bowling pin, taking out Rough and Tumble next to him. Marble Mouth lunged for me, but I was already up and dancing to the side away from his grasping hands.
Even with two down, the alley was too small to stay out of their reach for long, and when Roof-Tough dropped down behind me I knew I was screwed.
Except Marble Mouth’s eyes narrowed as he looked past me at Roof-Tough. His voice was an angry growl. “Yer dead, Keys.”
Keys? Ringo!
I felt him take a step closer and mumble in my ear. “There’s a bottle on the step behind me. Break it and arm yerself.” My heart slammed in my chest at the sound of his voice. If I was going to die a bloody death tonight at least I’d have the company of one of my best friends.
“I’ve done with ye, Lizzer. We’ve no more at stake wi’ t’other. The lad’s a mate and ye’ve no call to harm ‘im.”
“Mate o’ yers is enemy o’ mine, Keys.” Lizzer spat the words as his toughs regained their feet and array
ed themselves around him. I felt the step behind me and never took my eyes off Lizzer as I reached for the bottle. It felt heavy, like a wine bottle and Ringo’s voice mumbled at me again. “Smash it on the wall when ‘e moves.” I gripped the neck of the bottle tightly and felt every muscle in my body coil.
“Ye’ll let us by or ye’ll get cut.” There was an authoritative tone to Ringo’s voice I’d never heard before, and I had to remind myself he was only sixteen.
Lizzer barked out a laugh as he lunged. I swung the bottle at the corner of the brick wall and the bottom shattered off, leaving a jagged weapon in my hand. Ringo had been standing just behind me, so I hadn’t seen him until he blocked Lizzer’s lunge with a swing of a knife. Lizzer dodged the blade in my direction while the toughs jumped in and I swiped the bottle up in front of me.
Lizzer’s eyes went wide and then he howled.
“Bastard cut me!”
Crap! I was the bastard who cut him with my makeshift weapon. The toughs froze at the sound of their leader’s outrage and Ringo and I saw the opening at the same moment. We didn’t even have to say the word, we just ran.
Tempting Fate is available on Amazon.com.
And finally …
Thank you so much for reading Marking Time. If you enjoyed this book, your review on Amazon or Goodreads would be very appreciated. You can find more information about Marking Time and the Immortal Descendants series on Facebook, and on my website www.immortaldescendants.com.
I sincerely appreciate hearing from readers, and thank you, again, for joining Saira and Archer on their adventures in time.
~April White
For Connor, my Wolf
And Logan, my Ringo
And for Ed,
My Love.
The Immortal Descendants Series
Marking Time
Tempting Fate
Changing Nature
Waging War
Cheating Death
Copyright 2012 by April White
All rights reserved. Published by Corazon Entertainment
Palos Verdes Peninsula, CA
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. No part of this publication may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.
Cover design by Edward Gorsuch
Cover clock image by Zyllan http://www.flickr.com/photos/zyllan/5436985592/
Cover digital texture by Skeletalmess
ISBN 978-0-9885368-2-1
First American edition, October 2012
